Transferred Two Embryos: My Journey to Using a Surrogate, Part 4 of 7

We Transferred Two Embryos

By: Carolyn Dooley Apr 29, 2015

The following month we transferred two, partially hatching, perfect embryos into my uterus on my mother’s birthday. The blood test, confirming the pregnancy, would be on St. Patrick’s Day. Could anything possibly go wrong with all that luck? Tests later confirmed that I was pregnant but my hCG levels were low—another bad sign.

Another miscarriage, or chemical pregnancy, was confirmed a couple of days later and I spiraled into a full-blown depression. I got physically sick with a 103 fever and stayed in bed for a straight 48 hours staring at the wall. Daylight came and went and I didn’t turn on a light or the TV. Time just passed through my numbness. My mom called to see how I was feeling, and I couldn’t stop crying on the phone. She told me she was coming right over. When she got to my house she crawled into bed with me, held me like she did when I was a little girl, and we cried. After some time she walked over to my side of the bed, physically lifted me up and told my husband he needed to get me out of the house. “Go anywhere!” We decided to go to a movie and as I went through the motions, I realized she was right, and the fresh air began to lift the fog. I was ready to continue my fight.

I told the reproductive immunologist I wanted a whole new battery of tests run to see what my body was doing. At this point it had been almost two years and three miscarriages since my last tests. He called with the results in April on my birthday. My mom and I were driving home from having a “celebratory” breakfast when, on speaker, he went over the results. My body was “inflamed” and in an agitated state of attack. His next words were, “Have you considered surrogacy?” I was in shock. Of course I had considered this option, but since we couldn’t possibly afford that, my next step was looking into a sperm donor. As heartbreaking as this option seemed, especially knowing that we had six more frozen biological embryos, what else were we going to do? If my body would not tolerate our embryo’s genetic make-up, then donor sperm might be an option to consider. His response: “At this point, I don’t think your body would tolerate that either.” I fell silent, how could that be? I hung up the phone and my mom turned to me and said “Let’s do it, let’s find a surrogate.” “How?” I asked. She explained she had never closed the “wedding fund” account that she had opened years prior in order to save money for my wedding. At this point quite a sum had accumulated, and there was nothing in the world she would rather spend it on.

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